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Fixing Facebook Sharing Issues with SEOPress: A Troubleshooting Guide

23 threads Sep 16, 2025 Plugin → Seopress – on-site seo

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If you've recently updated the 'SEOPress – On-site SEO' plugin and found that Facebook is no longer correctly displaying your page titles, images, or descriptions, you're not alone. This is a common issue that can be caused by a variety of factors, from plugin conflicts to Facebook's own caching mechanisms. This guide will walk you through the most common causes and their solutions.

Why Does This Happen?

When you share a link on Facebook, its crawler (often called the 'Facebook scraper' or 'Facebook bot') visits your URL to read its Open Graph (OG) meta tags. These tags, generated by SEOPress, tell Facebook what title, image, and description to display. Problems arise when the scraper cannot access the page, reads incorrect tags, or uses outdated, cached information from a previous scrape.

Common Solutions to Try

1. Force Facebook to Clear Its Cache

The most frequent cause of incorrect sharing data is that Facebook is using an old cache. The Facebook for Developers Sharing Debugger tool is your best friend here.

  1. Enter the URL you want to share.
  2. Click the Scrape Again button.
  3. This forces Facebook's crawler to re-fetch fresh data from your site. You may need to do this multiple times.

2. Check for Duplicate Open Graph Tags

If your theme or another plugin is also generating Open Graph tags, Facebook will see duplicates and may use the wrong ones. This is a very common conflict.

  1. Temporarily switch to a default WordPress theme (like Twenty Twenty-Four) to see if the problem persists.
  2. Deactivate other plugins one by one, especially those related to social sharing (e.g., FIFU for social tags), SEO, or caching.
  3. After each change, re-scrape the URL in the Facebook Debugger. If the problem resolves, you've found the conflicting software.

3. Verify Your Image Meets Requirements

Facebook has strict requirements for OG images. If your image is too small, Facebook will ignore it and choose another image from the page, often with poor results.

  • The recommended size is 1200 x 630 pixels.
  • The minimum size is 200 x 200 pixels.
  • Check your image dimensions and ensure your WordPress featured image size (under Settings > Media) is large enough.

4. Ensure Pretty Permalinks Are Enabled

If your posts use a plain permalink structure (e.g., ?p=123), it can cause issues with canonical URLs and Open Graph data. Facebook may redirect to your homepage.

  1. Go to your WordPress Settings > Permalinks.
  2. Select a option like Post name instead of Plain.
  3. Save the changes.

5. Review Your Canonical URL Settings

Facebook and other social networks heavily rely on the og:url meta tag, which should match the canonical URL of the page. In SEOPress, you can manage trailing slashes to ensure consistency.

  1. Navigate to SEO > Advanced.
  2. Locate the option Disable trailing slash for metas.
  3. Ensure this setting is configured to match your site's preferred URL structure (with or without a trailing slash). An inconsistency here can cause warnings in audit tools and confuse social networks.

6. Check for Hosting or Security Restrictions

Sometimes, the issue is not with SEOPress but with your server environment. A firewall, security plugin, or modified robots.txt file could be blocking the Facebook crawler from accessing your site.

  • Temporarily disable security or firewall plugins to test.
  • Contact your hosting provider and ask if they block requests from known bot user-agents like the Facebook crawler.

Final Checklist

  • [ ] Used the Facebook Debugger to Scrape Again.
  • [ ] Checked for plugin/theme conflicts.
  • [ ] Confirmed OG image size is correct.
  • [ ] Verified pretty permalinks are enabled.
  • [ ] Ensured canonical URL settings are consistent.
  • [ ] Cleared all site and server-level caches.

By methodically working through these steps, you should be able to resolve most social sharing issues. The 'SEOPress – On-site SEO' plugin generates valid Open Graph tags, so problems are typically related to external caching, conflicts, or server configurations.

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